Little Known Facts: my first Boss was the great Bob Gnaizda. I was 9 or 10 and flew alone to Sacramento to work as his intern as an actual...wait for it...Social Justice Warrior fighting for the underprivileged.
I was in heaven as an elementary school kid. Bob was a legend and a hero who formed a fake organization called “The International Giraffe Appreciation Society” whose motto was “Stick Your Neck Out” he used it to make connections with high level leaders after giving speeches.
Bob traveled the world and would avoid tourist sites, prefering to tour a nation’s prisons to get to understand it better. He started Greenlining organizations to fight the use of Redlining to discriminate against Black and other American minorities in mortgage lending.
To this day I follow his ridiculous ritual for eating my chocolate w orange juice. He placed me in a Black family run by a single mom raising a son my age. We ran *wild* at night breaking into the Saraemento Zoo & doing potentialy deadly stunts on a super high bridge. I loved it.
I also learned viscerally why a single mom simply can’t supervise her children properly no matter how much she wants to protect & care for them. Every night I stayed there we were risking everything because this model upstanding mom was stretched way too thin as breadwinner.
Bob used his Yale Law degree and silver tongue to fight along side Ceaser Chavez on behalf of Mexican and migrant workers. He taught me legal and political strategies that I use to this day to avoid being truly cancelled. In effect I am fighting to return to his vision.
To sum up: we lost a great friend of true social justice. I don’t understand modern social justice because of what I learned from Bob. What I am often now fighting for is a return to ideals, not of the illegal mob, but of Bob Gnaizda and his type of vision of a far better world.
RIP to Bob Gnaizda. And thank you to my father who introduced me to this amazing true American Hero who he loved as a lifelong friend.
Maybe my internship was nepotism. But it changed me forever.
Thanks dad.
Maybe my internship was nepotism. But it changed me forever.
Thanks dad.
BTW “illegal mob” was supposed to be “illiberal mob” before my client autocorrected it. Apologies.
